Captain's Blog

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Bloggy Bits

What Do Ereaders Need To Improve?

I think most ereaders are at a barely acceptable level of functionality
— they let you read a book sequentially fairly well, but are often clunky
beyond that.
So this blog post is about things I'd like to see improved, and an
open invitation, asking what you'd like to see improved.

Had a funny experience at a board meeting the other day for a
non-profit board I'm
president of. To save paper we'd agreed that we'd try going digital
for our meeting packet, a 100+ page PDF.
Five of the eight of us brought an ereader to read our
It went pretty well, all in all.
Indeed, strangely the meeting finished faster than any has in years!
I don't know if the digital packet had anything to do with it.

But there
was one funny comment that sort of stuck in my mind, more of an indictment of
the flaws of ereaders than anything else: Late in the meeting, when
we were around, say, page 80 in the packet, I said
let's talk about topic XYZ next. A Board member who was using an iPad
to view his packet said, um, what page
is that on? I said it didn't have any material just for it, that I was
looking at the agenda on page 2. His reply was what got me: "Whoa, page 2!
Nevermind then, that's way too far back for me to swipe to a page at a time."
We all laughed at the foibles of ereaders and went on.

So, a fail for his iPad PDF reading app, and a small fail for using
ereaders for meeting packets.

I'd gone through the same process that morning, looking at my various
ereaders, trying out different apps, and found that none really sufficed
for quickly navigating a 100 page PDF.

Speed is important. Really important. It's not enough that a reader
device can replicate
the theoretical action of what you can do on paper, it has to do so roughly
as quickly. I can flip from page 100 to page 2 of a sheaf of papers in,
what, a second. If I'm not sure if it's page 2, I can flip among the early
pages rapidly, on paper. With an ereader, the navigation time plus the
page display time get quite cumbersome. In my friend's case, his app didn't
have any navigation except page forward/backward (as did many of my own
apps that I bypassed several devices because of). A hundred swipes to get
back to the beginning is absurdly slow.

Complex navigation is thus one thing many (if not nearly all) ereaders
need to work on. Every ereader should offer a way to quickly flip
through pages, jump to beginning, end, or specific "page" number.

Also: Quick bookmarking and returning. I don't want to fumble with
a lot of menus and clicking/tapping/etc. to put in a brief bookmark so I
can thumb through for something and return. With paper I can stick in
a finger, riffle the pages, and return to my finger. Very quick.
Speed matters. I can even stick in several fingers — used to do
that a lot with textbooks. Flipping quickly between several bookmarked
points is sometimes necessary, yet cumbersome with most ereaders.

That brings up: "Page" numbers. With a paper book, you get roughly
330 words on a page (give or take; I've counted a number of times over the
years and that's a really common number I've hit on). Say, 1,000 words in
three pages. It would be nice for ereaders to settle on some common
numbering scheme that would allow for "page" number-like references. By
"common" I mean, works across formats (mobi, epub, etc.), isn't changed
by altering the font size, doesn't depend on how many words are displayed
on the screen, etc. So a screen count doesn't do it. Paragraph numbers
can get pretty large.

Perhaps "page" numbers defined as three pages per 1,000 words, and
allowing decimals? Page "80.5" would take you to what would roughly be
found in the middle of a printed page 80? That is, if it takes three screenfuls
of 100 words each to view that section of words, 80.5 is going to be the
middle of them. It would correspond to about the 26800th word in the text,
but it's a lot easier to deal with "80" or even "80.5" than 26800..

Also: Identify my position in (a) the whole book and (b) the current
chapter/section/story (if an anthology), using that same numbering scheme
and visually. I know some readers display a bar showing a percent and/or
shaded graphic of how far along you. Some show both chapter and whole book.
That's good. But I still find page numbers useful. Call me old fashioned.
I have an internal idea of what it means to be 80 pages into a 300 page
book, or 5 pages into a 15 page short story or chapter.

Knowing my position in absolute terms (not a relative percent) is
useful information to me about the flow of the piece. I know if I'm
on page 200 of 300 that I'm likely nearing the climax of a novel, and
I have a sense of what 100 pages left means. Telling me I'm 66% or 32864
screens into it just doesn't have the same meaning.

Non-text: Illustrations for kids books, or any nicely illustrated
book, graphs/tables/etc. for nonfiction, etc., are often clumsily handled
in readers. Generally need that to improve, across the board (all readers).

Ok, I'll stop and ask: What are your wish lists for what ereaders
should do better?